An Old-School Super Bowl

Given that it’s Super Bowl Sunday, a day devoted to spectacle, it might make some sense to talk about something incredible Vonta Leach has done—something like the block he made last year, in his very first regular-season play as the fullback for the Baltimore Ravens, when he set running back Ray Rice free to carry the ball thirty-six yards downfield.

But this seems more fitting: it’s early in the second quarter of this year’s A.F.C. Championship Game, and the Ravens are trailing the New England Patriots, 3-0. The Ravens have the ball on the Patriots’ forty-four yard line; it’s first down, and ten to go. Leach is lined up behind quarterback Joe Flacco, and a little bit in front of backup running back Bernard Pierce. Flacco takes the snap, and hands the ball off to Pierce. Ahead of him, Leach finds Patriots defensive tackle Vince Wilfork. A Pro Bowler, one of the best in the league, Wilfork’s crashing into the backfield, threatening to blow up the play, and Leach just… blocks him. No fancy techniques, no crash heard in the stands—just holds the guy up for a moment, makes him pause long enough for Pierce to find a little room off to the outside and make a move. When the whistle blows, Pierce has gained four yards, and Wilfork has fallen on his face trying to catch up. It looks like a nothing play, but it sets the Ravens up nicely for the next down, when Flacco fakes a handoff to Pierce before throwing the ball twenty-five yards to receiver Torrey Smith, which leads, eventually, to the first touchdown of the game. And it’s the kind of nothing play that Leach gets paid about four million dollars a year to make.

The position Leach plays, fullback, isn’t one most N.F.L. teams care much about—Tom Foley was still Speaker of the House the last time one was taken in the first round of the draft. In contrast to the fullbacks of old, like Jim Brown, who excelled at running with the ball, a blocking fullback like Leach is basically a cross between an offensive lineman and a running back: smaller than the big maulers on the line, and about a hundred pounds lighter, but also faster and more agile; slower than the running back, but bigger, tougher, and a better blocker. He has one job, basically—break open a path for his running back, taking out the defenders in the way. If he does it right, he helps that running back gain a consistent four or five yards with each carry, which has all sorts of benefits besides the obvious ones. It takes pressure off the quarterback, and also allows him to run play-action, faking a handoff before dropping back to pass; it forces the opposing defense to prepare for both the run and the pass, and tires them out; it keeps his own offense on the field, and his defense off it, so they can rest. Thing is, your typical N.F.L. coach is no longer that interested in this kind of plodding attack, not when so many teams have come to rely on dynamic, pass-heavy offenses instead. So they don’t want to spend a roster spot on a guy who’s basically just a run-blocker, no matter how good he is at it. Why would they, when they could instead have the kind of freak-of-nature tight ends now invading the league, people who are big and strong and can stand on the end of the offensive line and block, but are also scary fast, and can streak down the field to catch a pass like a wide receiver?

Yet, by some coincidence, both of the teams in today’s Super Bowl rely on their fullbacks. The Ravens have Leach, who is generally considered the best in the game right now; the San Francisco 49ers have Bruce Miller. Once an afterthought, a seventh-round draft pick who played defensive end in college before the 49ers had him switch positions to see if he could hack it, he’s now an integral part of their offense, including the fancy-sounding quirky stuff they do, like the pistol and the read option.

It’s odd that two teams that do reliably use a fullback should be facing each other in the championship game. In the playoffs, the Ravens faced three teams—the Indianapolis Colts, the Denver Broncos, and the New England Patriots—that almost never suit up a fullback, when they even have one on their roster. (The 49ers did, however, play against two teams that use a fullback: the Green Bay Packers have John Kuhn, one of the last of the dual running and blocking threats in the league right now, and the Atlanta Falcons still use one, though they don’t value the position as highly as they did even just a year or two ago.)

But there’s no arguing that Leach and Miller have each had an appreciable impact on their respective teams. The Ravens’ most successful seasons have typically been the ones in which they’ve had big, powerful fullbacks—it’s no coincidence that they signed Pro Bowler Sam Gash just before the start of their last Super Bowl run, in 2000—and the two years with Leach have been no different. In 2010, the year before Leach arrived, the team averaged a disappointing 3.8 yards per carry, and starting running back Ray Rice had only 4.0 yards per carry. In 2011, with Leach on board, that number rose to 4.3 yards per carry for the team, where it stayed this year, and Rice had 4.7 yards per carry on his way to finishing as the second-leading rusher in the N.F.L. (Rice’s numbers dropped off this year, but that was probably more about a change in play-calling than anything else.) As for Miller, he’s been key to the 49ers’ very dangerous read-option ground game, which involves quarterback Colin Kaepernick deciding after the start of the play whether to keep the ball and run it himself, or to hand it off to running back Frank Gore. According to ESPN’s Stats & Info blog, in the twenty-five times when the 49ers have run the ball out of the read option without Miller on the field, they’ve gained an average of 5.1 yards and scored two touchdowns. In the forty-eight times they’ve done it with Miller, they’ve gained an average of 8.1 yards—6.7 of them before an opposing defender even touches the ball carrier—and scored seven touchdowns.

Both the 49ers and the Ravens are capable of some amazing feats on offense—quick strikes that catch the defense off guard and make games thrilling to watch. There will likely be at least some of those today. But it’s also possible that the game will be more typical of one between fullback-heavy teams: slow, grind-it-out, “three yards and a cloud of dust” football, with lots of running but not much scoring. It’s the kind of football that fanatics love, or claim to, and others—those who watch one game a year, say—find boring.

Still, even if this Super Bowl turns out to be that type of game, it’s worth savoring, because it could be the final one like this we see for some time. Fullbacks are useful, no question, but in today’s N.F.L., it’s hard to argue that they’re more useful than a more versatile player would be. There’s even been some speculation that this will be Leach’s last year with the Ravens, who will face some difficult decisions as they work to get under the salary cap for next season. But it’s too early to declare this game the ultimate last stand of the fullback. In football, what’s old is almost always eventually new again. One day, maybe, the fullback will be too. For now, we’ll just have to content ourselves with one last chance to watch some of the best at work.

Photograph by Matt Slocum/AP.

Alex Koppelman was a politics editor for newyorker.com from from 2011 to 2013.